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Minnesota Vikings’ Chris Kluwe to honored Saturday by Orange County gay center for his support marriage equality, gay rights

Huntington Beach resident Chris Kluwe, a punter with the Minnesota Vikings, is an avid supporter of equality for gay and lesbians. Although he is heterosexual, he is one of the NFL’s most spoken advocates for equality. (LANG/Staff Photo by Sean Hiller)

To LGBT activists, Chris Kluwe kicks butt on and off the football field.

In September, ex-Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo spoke out in favor of a Maryland ballot initiative that would legalize gay marriage. That support ruffled the feathers of Maryland State Delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr., who wrote Ravens’ owner Steve Bisciotti, urging him to “inhibit such expressions from your employee.”

In part, the letter said: “I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won’t even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery. … Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?”

“When I saw Burns’ letter I was like, ‘Come on.’ It infuriated me,” Kluwe said in a recent interview. “I was hoping my letter would entertain and educate some people.”

“Chris is being honored for his powerful advocacy of marriage equality,” said Kevin O’Grady, executive director of the Center OC. “From his position as an NFL player with the Vikings, he offers a unique voice. He can speak to segments of the nation that LGBT leaders could never reach.”

His letter of support wasn’t the first time Kluwe made headlines. In 1999, while a senior at Los Alamitos High, Kluwe, who was born in Philadelphia and raised in Seal Beach, kicked a 60-yard field goal that broke the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section’s playoff record for distance. A short time later, he was named a USA Today “All-High School” player.

Kluwe played football at UCLA, where he graduated as a history and political science major. He joined the Vikings in 2007.

During an interview at the Huntington Beach home he shares with his wife, Isabel, 32, and their two daughters, Olivia, 4, and Remy, 2, Kluwe talked about how he became a vocal supporter of marriage equality and an LGBT advocate:

P-T: How did you get involved with marriage equality?

CK: While I was living in Minnesota last May or June, Minnesotans for Equality, a group that was trying to defeat an amendment that would have changed the state Constitution and made it illegal for gay people to get married, contacted me.

I thought what Minnesota Equality was trying to do was a great idea. The government shouldn’t be able take away people’s rights.

P-T: How did Minnesota Equality know you would be receptive to their cause?

CK: They followed me on Twitter and based on things I had said, they thought I would be cool with it.

P-T: Had you ever been an LGBT advocate before?

CK: If I heard someone using gay slurs, I would say, Hey, hey, there are other words you can use. I’d let them know it wasn’t cool to use those words.

P-T: How did the other Minnesota Vikings players react to the letter you wrote to Maryland State Delegate Emmet C. Burns Jr.?

CK: The majority of their feedback was positive. Even some of the guys who came up to me and said they didn’t agree with me on marriage equality said they appreciated me supporting free speech.

P-T: When do you think an NFL player will come out and publicly admit he’s gay?

CK: There are guys who some of the players know are gay, but no one talks about it, and there are other players who are in the closet to everyone.

It’s tough because we’re told a gay player would be a distraction, but that’s asinine. He would only be a distraction if we made him one. There’s a bunch of other stuff that happens during the season every year, anything from arrests and media attention, and somehow we’ve managed to not be distracted.

Someone has to take the first step and show it won’t be a distraction.

P-T: On Friday, the Republican National Committee confirmed its opposition to gay marriage.

CK: They don’t get it. The Whigs probably had similar meetings. It will be difficult for them to change because the values they’ve been espousing for more than 20 years had solidified their conservative base.

The Republican Party is the party that freed the slaves and this is contradictory to that. This is the same struggle for human rights.